First Look: Leica M8

First off, I must apologize for the incoherence of my impressions. I've had the camera for about 5 days and I'm still getting used to it. Here are some of the things that I've liked, disliked, or just found noteworthy:

1/8000s shutter speed is nice. Good for shooting lenses wide-open in the day.

Auto ISO is handy, as long as you keep in mind the amount of grain.

The integral exposure meter is dumb. Must remember to use AE Lock.

The shutter isn't that loud. With discreet film advance, it's good enough for most places.

White balance is surprisingly good, even if it's not always consistent.

Writing to the memory card is slow. If you don't have auto-review enabled, you have to wait 3 seconds before you can chimp.

Shutter release feels cheap and hollow.

But no shutter lag. Very responsive.

Intuitive menus and controls. There's not much to learn in order to use the camera, and what's there is self-explanatory.

Size is good. Feels like a M6TTL in hand. Not as elegant as the M6 "classic" and older models.

Exposure compensation sucks. It's stuck in a menu that takes 4 presses to activate. Annoying.